[Marc Sabatella]

Should I really use the scenes in the camera? I thought I wouldn't learn anything from letting the camera do the work.

You could certainly give it a try to see if it produces better results. Then you can examine the settings the camera chose and learn from them. But I suspect that simply learning about exposure by reading a good tutorial and then practicing on your own would be more effective.

[rfortson]

I suspect you wanted more sky, but your camera tried to expose for the foreground, meaning the sky got "blown out" (overexposed). For that particular shot, the difference between the sky and the shadows is probably too great to properly capture with a digital camera. If you want to capture the sky, meter for the sky and reduce the amount of foreground shot (since your subject is actually the sky/sunset).

All the other advice is sound. Good luck!

[Peter Zack]

I would also recommend Bryan Peterson book. But before getting that. You would be better off using setting other than the SCN ones. That's fine for quick snap shots but to really learn this system, you need to understand what the camera is doing and seeing. Sunsets like the one you posted must be shot in manual in my opinion and with a tripod (no SR) or some other support like a picnic table etc. Some people have bean bags that they can stabilize the camera on almost anything.

But a sunset presents challenges to the camera. it tried to expose the foreground in your shot and blew out much of the sky. If you use spot metering off the sky and set the controls manually, you'll get a better result. Low ISO middle apertures and if you want to get higher saturation shots with more sky colours, then slightly underexpose the shot.
You will get more noise in the dark regions of the shot but that can be cleaned up in Noise Ninja (freeware).

Last as everyone says. A little careful sharpening is important for a good final result. As you know, this was my lens you have and it gave me very good results.

Although this was heavily processed. This shot came from your new lens:


and this

and finally